Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender & Queer Jamaica: Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society continues its “HIV is a gay disease” campaign with more deception added

After listening an interview on Power 106FM’s Justice show with host Marlene Malahoo Forte former resident magistrate, former Minister of Foreign Affairs in the last Jamaica Labour Party administration with a spokesperson from the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society, I am just baffled as to the depths of which they will continue to employ deceptive and dodgy narratives to make to enhance their public advocacy against homosexuality as it were albeit they are supposed to be a Christian organization.

Scribes and Pharisees anyone?

JCHS on the backdrop of the consultations with parliamentarians of the review or possible conscience on buggery vote as suggested turned promise by the present Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and a newly launched campaign named Justice for All held at the Conference Centre April 9. 2014 to go on for two days lead by PANCAP, the Coordinator for the Greater Involvement of Persons Living with HIV/AIDS, GIPA, Ainsley Reid spoke to the issue via media where he among other things said “The Justice for All initiative is primarily geared at consciousness of the society around issues relating to people who are living with HIV/AIDS, people who are at risk and people who are directly affected, we know that there are dignity issues, social and economic issues, primarily for people living with HIV health issues in terms of access to treatment, long term counselling and so on. He also spoke to stigma and discrimination issues including forced evictions, workplace policy and other developmental matters. He also outlined that the old perception of HIV/AIDS being a gay disease is still out there via gossip, confidentiality and cultural misnomers which was evidenced in the JCHS interview germane to this post.

One Miss Angela Temple representing the JCHS says there is an international imperialistic agenda to change the structure of the family, silencing of religious voices in the secularism agenda pinged to the struggle and that HIV prevention/reproductive rights used as a mask to hide the gay agenda. She referenced the Queen Ifrica matter, the Duck Dynasty actor issue the UK street preacher matter and the recent Mozilla CEO resignation issue after he donated money to supporting a no to gay marriage campaign and that persons won’t have free speech, she claims that the justice for all campaign here is only for a meagre four percent and the rest of persons will be up against law suits and doesn't make sense, so the minority is unimportant in her eyes and must be trampled upon. She went on to suggest the conscience vote must not be private if it happens and that a referendum would be more acceptable. She is obviously not taking into account that given her and that of JCHS/Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship’s posture no political party at this time despite slow increase in fragile tolerance and international or diplomatic pressure will take the risk to be perceived in the end as letting in homosexuality in the face of a lack of proper education and conversation not pronouncement.

The deep mistrust and lies on all sides is disturbing to me as well, the claim that future victimization of the church as I had postulated as a false dichotomy maybe not so if everyone continues to hold hardened positions with name calling, deceptive narratives devoid of factual information on all sides may I reiterate.

The sides seem to be intent on throwing blows and with each blow that comes it must be a knock out punch bigger and impactful without listening a key component in any struggle but ethics seem to have gone through the window on all sides, fear and fearmongering abounds on the part of the JCHS and related names and groups while head strong LGBT names keep pushing on their own narcissistic quests while also not listening but editorialise and academise the issues to look good on the international circuit. And where is the care from the Christian minded folks or even the existence of gay Christians or such minded persons by all sides as well. JFLAG seems not to understand that such persons also exists and must be represented in the struggle since the belief systems and God’s presence or none thereof is becoming the core of the argument. I warned about this in an earlier podcast after the full public introduction of the secularist ambit by Javed Jaghai when he was spokesperson and Education Officer of JFLAG in 2012, now comes the backlash from a more organised religious right that complains the lobby is using the strategy of rights and public health as linked to the Justice for All campaign falls, so what is wrong with such campaigns, I thought that the overall struggle for rights any at all isn't for the least numbers or outcasts? And as for imperialistic isn't this obvious tyranny of the majority thus an imperialistic thinking, theocracy anyone?

She quoted the late Paula Ettelbrick who passed in 2011, lesbian lawyer and former chair of IGLHRC where she had said “Being queer is more than setting up house sleeping with a person of the same gender and seeking state approval for doing so being queer means pushing the parameters of sex sexuality and family and in the process transforming the very fabric of society, we must keep our eyes on the goal for providing two alternatives to marriage and radically reorganising and radically reordering society’s view of reality.” As if the message implies some imperative to block or take away parental authority, rights already in vogue (marriage included) and stifling of free speech of those who express otherwise. The JCHS rep said if we touch the buggery law in any way it would be a change in the fabric of Jamaican society implying fire and brimstone from the skies, I will grant her that is true as it would in terms of the change in the fabric of society as persons who once hid may consider reorganizing their lives to be open (despite the expected cultural backlash) and I do not expect a radical or seismic shift either as persons adjust in their own ways to the new reality, these kinds of changes sometimes takes generations before one sees settling on such contentious matters as we have a cultural problem more than a legal one with decades of ingrained and normative homo-negativity.

The deceptive use of the words/terms “new sneaky rights” “new morality” and “lifestyle” (also used by the host) instead of the appropriate term sexual orientation and real attraction of persons to other persons of the same sex while imputing predatory intent is wrong and is a deliberate strategy to inflame public opposers without teaching those who are easily led. The rep also said that children as early as three will be taught that anal sex in normal when children at that age are not taught sexual reproductive health in the present hetero-imperative arrangement, she was unable to provide any proof of this future plan.

Then came the other deception of manipulating research, where the rep used the old 2010 French study (yet again) without a buggery law for over 200 years had rates of new cases to be 1006/100,000 persons in comparison to 86/100,000 intravenous drug community and 9 in the heterosexual community suggesting that persons wantonly going out there to contract HIV and what she did not put is that most of the infected MSM had never engaged the health care systems prior to study so being in the underground obviously has a ripple effect of prevention work.

What bothered me more so in this exchange is the ignoring of a fundamental question posed by Mrs Forte as to the history of the statue and why it was implemented in the first place by our former colonial masters, the JCHS representative totally dodged the matter and instead went on a well flowery and obviously scripted rant on reproductive health manipulation by the gay rights lobby and so on. I smell the hand of Dr Wayne West’s here and his influence as the sentiments about Philosophy and law were espoused though clumsily at times as if she was reading a document or being prodded behind the scenes.

Mrs Forte asked “............Do you know what was the basis of that, what it is about anal penetration that would cause lawmakers in their wisdom of yesteryear to say this is something that we need to say not at all?” the JCHS rep dodged the direct question completely by answering from a script I dare say, using terms she couldn't bother to explain to the listening audience.

“One of the things that people confuse is that they try to suggest that anal penetration is sex and it is my understanding that the intestine is not a sex organ it can’t procreate, buggery, it is the misuse of the anus ......it can do physical harm to the recipient in terms of the sphincter muscle going, people say you’re not gonna get HIV AIDS if you use a condom but the person being penetrated has on a condom is at risk and harm because the insides of the intestine were not never meant withstand the types of friction from that type of penetration, it tears easily and then you end up with a myriad of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV which is most easily transmitted in this type of environment, it must be noted that HIV is not only an epidemic it is a pandemic ........ The buggery law must remain as a danger sign because it does harm not only to the individual but to society and the world at large ..........”

Nice run to not let Mrs Forte come in with any rejoinder while deliberately avoiding the direct question, I am shocked however that Mrs Forte allowed her such a long run but I guess fairness must be shown since “freedom of speech” is about to be quashed in the eyes of the JCHS. My mind runs to an older interview with Mrs Forte and Dane Lewis in June 2013 where the same HIV is a gay disease ploy was used in a set of trick questions, she asked for eg about containing conduct if after the buggery law in its present form what would obtain to which Mr Lewis answered “........... Does the state have a right to legislate what consenting adults do in private regardless of their sexual orientation.....If we address that first then we can begin to talk about where that threshold is and so I speak about consenting adults when we talk about threshold........... Protecting our most vulnerable which would be our young people.” He also called for the non discrimination clause that was removed in draft from the Charter of Rights.

Truth as I have been agitating needs to be the core of all this but with the hardening of positions taking place somebody has to loose in the end, who will it be?

If you can stomach it have a listen here: